SWW09: Tuesday General Session (Part 3: Jon’s customer visits)

I brought two pairs of shoes with me to SolidWorks World, black dressy pair, and sporty comfortable New Balance atheletic shoes.  I wore the dressy pair to the General Session.  I’m wearing New Balance shoes right now, for two reasons.  First, they are more comfortable for all the walking around.  SolidWorks Worlds are expansive, with sessions spread out over the entire site.  Comfortable shoes are a must.  The second reason?  Jon Hirschtick showed us several customer visits he recently conducted.  The first company profiled was New Balance shoe company. 

It was amazing to see the level of integration of SolidWorks within the rapid design process at New Balance.  Since shoes are attached to the fashion industry, quick time to market is essential.  New Balance is able to go from a SolidWorks model to actual shoe prototype in just a couple of days.  Before New Balance used SolidWorks in their design process, it took fifteen days to create 2D drawings in CAD.  With SolidWorks, they are able to produce 3D models in just 5 days.  Their models average about 1300 features, with one model reaching 1800 features.  Speed and accuracy seem to be very important as each design of shoe will eventually require over 1000 different molds and dies to support 176 unique shoe sizes.  During their design process, they use 3D printing to produce rapid prototypes.  It is not uncommon for them to produce a hundred or more 3D printed prototypes per month.

Sony Ericsson was then introduced by Hirschtick.  His visit to their site revealed they used rapid prototyping, both SLA and 3D printing processes.  In fact, they produce 4000 rapid prototype models per year.  It is common for them to produce prototypes for phones after only 2 to 3 hours of SolidWorks modelling time.  In the mid-1990’s, they switched to 3D CAD and have since seen a 75% drop in the design cycle time.  They went from producing 4 designs a year to over 30. 

I am impressed by seeing the type of rapid concept to prototype design processes being employed by Sony Ericsson and New Balance.  I’m also more appreciative of my New Balance shoes, though I already know these are well made and very comfortable shoes.

Author: fcsuper

As a drafter, mechanical designer and CAD engineer, I've been in the mechanical design field since 1991. For the first 8 years of my career, I was an AutoCAD professional. I utilized AutoLISP and many other AutoCAD customization features to streamline drafting activities for 6+ drafters and designers. I authored several custom functions, one of which was published in the March 1997 issue of Cadalyst Magazine. Since 1998, I've been used SolidWorks non-stop. I've worked to utilize the SolidWorks' user environment to simplify drafting and design activities for 20+ engineers. I've created this website to provide current information about SolidWorks from a variety of contributors. More recently, I am now employed by Dassault Systemes as SOLIDWORKS Sr. Product Definition Manager to improve drawing, annotation and MBD related areas. View all posts by fcsuper